


So it Goes

by TheLoonyMoony



Series: Love itself shall slumber on [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Remus Lupin, seriously all the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 14:17:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6910639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLoonyMoony/pseuds/TheLoonyMoony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus doesn’t know where to even begin explaining himself. If the love of his life didn’t know him in the ten years they had known each other, what could he change with a ten-minute speech?<br/>(In which Remus is very much the lone wolf.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	So it Goes

**Author's Note:**

> Excerpts from the works of Shelley and Dryden.  
> The title is a reference to Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse 5".

** Part 3: Remus Lupin **

February, 1981.

_“Alas! I have nor hope nor health,_

_Nor peace within nor calm around,_

_Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure._

_Others I see whom these surround—_

_Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;_

_To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.”_

The words blur into a black and white mess in front of Remus. That feeling of his heart being squeezed – _like a fruit that had already given up all the juice it could offer_ , he thinks a little hysterically – is nothing new; but the tell-tale moisture in his eyes is. Strange, how you could bury deep into yourself and hide all your sorrows in there, out of sight, out of reach, but bloody Shelley could pull them all out just like that.

“Traitor,” Remus glares at the book, putting it into a box marked BOOKS – MUGGLE.

Remus sighs and goes ahead with the packing. All he had managed in the last three hours was arranging a few empty cardboard boxes in various positions on the floor of the room. Their room. His room. Fuck. _The_ room.

“ _Focus_ ,” Remus whispers fervently to the tattered remains of his composure, gritting his teeth and squaring his shoulders. There’s work to do.

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

As Remus folds the last of his garments into an appropriately marked box, he smiles – all his clothes fitting into one mere box, but surely his books and parchments will require about half a dozen of them. If Sirius was home, he would have cracked roughly twenty lame jokes about Remus’ nerdy life choices by now, all the while guffawing at his own brilliant sense of humour.

Not that Remus has heard Sirius’ bark of a laugh at all recently.

Remus doesn’t know which is worse: Sirius’ suspicions, James’ obliviousness, or Lily’s pity. No, he knows. He wishes _he_ could have been oblivious instead, but Gods, he knows. The inside of his mind is a tangle of confusion (Why, Sirius? How could you even _think_ – ) and guilt (I always fuck up, what’s new) and hurt. The last is not something he has ever been a stranger to, the wolf had made sure of that. Pain is not something Remus Lupin even bats an eye at anymore. He has endured his bones snapping and twisting, every cell in his body stretching, reshaping, felt his own claws dig into himself deep enough to leave marks on his bones, felt howls rip out of himself like spikes tearing his throat into ribbons from the inside. Who would have thought that something as clichéd as heartbreak could hurt so much more? Remus had survived the wolf’s attacks, but Sirius went deeper, went right for his heart.

 

_“My cheek is cold and white, alas!_

_My heart beats loud and fast;_

_O press it close to thine again_

_Where it will break at last!”_

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

Remus does his best to lose himself in the mechanical process of pulling books one by one from the shelf, dusting them, then settling them into cases. He prefers the mechanical monotony of the routine, instead of magicking his belongings into neat packages.

But his mind refuses to be lulled, doesn’t sit still, decides to get up and wander about...

  

 

_“Listen, you either trust him or you don’t. All or nothing. It is as simple as that,” Remus points a shaking finger at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror._

_“You just make up your mind and stick to it,” he continues, voice bordering on desperate, because Lily is worried, and James is in danger, and Pete’s so scared he probably shakes in his own boots all day, and little Harry needs to be safe. And Padfoot –_

_Remus sees his face in the mirror lose its scrunched up fury and relax into something vaguely resembling relief._

_“What am I thinking? Of course Padfoot isn’t the spy!” Remus manages half a smirk at himself, “Sodding dog will sooner die than betray us.”_

 

 

Remus remembers being surprised later on when he realized that Sirius had not given him the same trust, had not extended towards him at least the courtesy of the benefit of the doubt. Remembers having nothing to say because his brain was frozen on a loop of _“Sirius thinks I am a WHAT?!”_

Sirius, who snuggles his face into the crook of Remus’ neck even in the vulnerable unconsciousness of sleep; Sirius, who always bared his throat in supplication to Moony whenever the wolf needed to calm down; Sirius, who knew him since they were children, knows everything there _is_ to know about him; _his_ Sirius, his pack...thought him capable of slaughtering his best friends on the orders of a mass-murdering psychopath?

He doesn’t know where to even begin explaining himself. If the love of his life didn’t know him in the ten years they had known each other, what could he change with a ten-minute speech?

 

_“How shall I plead my cause, when you, my judge,_

_Already have condemned me?”_

 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

The packed and taped boxes sat ready around Remus’ feet.

“Don’t judge me!” he scowls at each of the cases in turn, “I have to leave before Padf – before he gets here. I can’t...I cannot do this with him staring accusations at my back. With his ridiculous puppy eyes and his –”

One choked-off sob scrapes its way out of Remus before he can rein it in. It seems too loud in the eerie quiet of what was once home, seems almost offensive to the memories of giddy shrieks and wanton moans that once echoed against the very same walls.

Remus decides that he’s not going to leave a goodbye note. What could he possibly write? Besides, he had already said his farewells last night.

 

_Sirius lets himself in with his key, then looks on dumbfounded at the Remus-shaped figure at their dining table, hunched over the evening edition of the Daily Prophet. He hadn’t expected Remus to be back before him. He thinks of all the times he had wished to come home to a waiting Moony, thinks how funny it was that he gets his wish granted now that everything between them is falling apart and his Moony may not be his after all and home doesn’t even feel like home anymore._

_He pauses, unsure, as Remus glances up at him, a strange expression on his face. Sirius isn’t sure if it looks like acceptance, or resignation._

_“Hey,” Remus’ voice sounds soft and for some reason it unsettles Sirius. Then Remus moves till he can press himself up against Sirius, chest to knees, till his arms find their familiar way around Sirius’ waist, till Sirius drops his briefcase in a daze and holds him back._

_Everything after that is a jumble of desperation for recreating what they once had and hope of reclaiming the sanity they once possessed. Step by careful step, starting with Sirius’ too-long hair and down to his toes, Remus lets his mouth and hands trace their goodbyes. He presses the words onto Sirius’ sweat-slick skin with all the love and care he can muster_. _He takes his time, memorizes the way Sirius’ back curves against his front, the way Sirius impales himself deeper on Remus’ fingers, the way he jerks in his arms as Remus reaches around to pinch and pull at his nipples, how his head slumps back on Remus’ shoulder, exposing his jugular – a silent, canine-like plea to be marked. Remus complies, bites, and tries very hard not to think about how this too will fade away with time. He concentrates instead on Sirius’ moans and tries to memorize them too. Sirius then growls out something about “fuck me already dammit!” So Remus does. And he loses his grip on memorizing, loses his mind a little, but for one magnificent moment, he finds his way back home._

 

Remus shakes himself back to the present. He sighs again. It seems like a day of too many sighs.

He flicks his wand, watches four years of his life march out of the house in the form of a few craggy cardboard boxes. Remus follows them out, turns back and shuts the door, then walks out and away.

He refuses to look back.

 

 

_“Think you he would not sigh, though he must leave me?_

_Sure he would sigh; for he is noble-natured,_

_And bears a tender heart: I know him well._

_Ah, no, I know him not; I knew him once,_

_But now ’tis past._

_Did he then weep? And was I worth a tear?”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I am SO SORRY for the super-late update!  
> There truly is no excuse. :(


End file.
